Lee Hurst gave a demo of Google Data Studio that opened up a huge new horizon for me.

WordPress Themes and MVC (or lack thereof)

I’ve been thinking about WordPress themes lately: cleaning up a legacy theme in my spare time, watching the new Beans theme framework develop, growing more dissatisfied with the WordPress “spaghetti and meatballs” in general. Matt’s presentation, a kind of 35,000 ft view of opportunities for implementing a more MVC pattern within WordPress made a lot of sense and pointed towards a few patterns to try in my future exploration.

CSS Grid

Since Eric Meyers CSS Definitive Guide, 4th edition dropped last month, I’ve had my mind on the extent to which that technology has changed even in just the past year or so. Most notably, the new Grid specification has finally been fully implemented in the MS Edge browser — which makes it realistic to actually use it on new sites. But the Definitive Guide is a huge book, and I’d been on the fence about whether to actually dive in. I’d dabbled with Grid over the last couple months, but Tracy’s demo convinced me that now is the time to take the plunge.

Google Data Studio

OMG. You mean I can import whatever data I want however I want into a widget without coding the whole damn API myself! Holy crap! This changes everything. Big thanks to Lee for fleshing out what all the commotion is about.

What’s Next

I’ve realized that I, too, have a few things I’ve learned over the years that I need to be more proactive about sharing. So the last thing about the WC Rochester experience left me with is the itch to submit a talk or two of my own for a few upcoming WordCamps. Object Oriented WordPress Themes anyone?